The Whidbey Writers Workshop will host three free literary events at the Captain Whidbey Inn at 7:30 p.m. Jan. 7, 10 and 14.

Thirteen professional writers and the workshop’s esteemed faculty will read from their own works at the events. Books by the authors will also be available for sale by Booklovers Book Exchange of Freeland.

The series kicks on Jan. 7 with writers Susan Wingate, Joni Sensel, Kit Bakke and David Wagoner.

Wingate is an award-winning bestselling writer and the author of “Drowning.” She is also the co-host of the talk radio show, “Dialogue: Between the Lines.”

Sensel has written four novels for young readers, two clandestine picture books, and several nonfiction books for adults, including “The Skeleton’s Knife” and “The Timekeeper’s Moon.”

Bakke is the author of “Miss Alcott’s E-mail” and “Dot to Dot.”

David Wagoner is the author of 18 books of poems, most recently “A Map of the Night” and “Good Morning and Good Night,” a member of the MFA faculty and has been nominated for the Pulitzer Prize.

The gathering on Jan. 10 will feature David Patneaude, Terry Persun, Bonny Becker, Kathleen Alcala and Bruce Holland Rogers.

Patneaude’s novels include “Epitaph Road” and “Someone Was Watching.”

Persun is the author of six novels ranging from science fiction to literary, including “Wolf’s Rite.”

Becker, a Whidbey Writers Workshop MFA faculty member along with Alcala and Holland Rogers, is the author of 12 books for children and young adults, most recently the award-winning and best-selling books, “A Visitor for Bear,” “A Birthday for Bear” and “A Bedtime for Bear.”

Alcala has penned three novels set in 19th century Mexico, a collection of short stories, and a collection of essays, “The Desert Remembers My Name: On Family and Writing.”

Holland Rogers’ short fiction collections include “Flaming Arrows,” “Wind Over Heaven” and “Thirteen Ways to Water.” He is also the author of “Word Work: Surviving and Thriving as a Writer.”

At the final event on Jan. 14, the writers include Kathleen Dean Moore, Gloria Burgess, Deb Lund and Larry Cheek.

Dean Moore is award-winning nature writer, public speaker and defender of all that is wet and wild. She most recently published “Moral Ground: Ethical Action for a Planet in Peril.”

Burgess is an award-winning writer, performer and director. Her most recent book is “Dare to Wear Your Soul on the Outside.”

Lund is the author of “Monsters on Machines” and Harcourt’s celebrated dinoseries.

Cheek, a member of the MFA faculty, has published 15 nonfiction books on travel, nature, North American prehistory and architecture, and has also written a memoir about building a sailboat.

For additional information, contact the Northwest Institute of Literary Arts at 331-0307, or program director Wayne Ude at ude@nila.edu.

To learn more about the Whidbey Writers Workshop’s Master of Fine Arts Program through NILA, go to www.nila.edu.